A Short Wait at the Sorting Place

[a short story]

‘Where are we?’ he asked.

‘Some sort of waiting room, I think.  Just before you arrived, a person sitting over there was called in to that room.’  She nodded to door 1.  There seemed to be about twenty closed doors down the hallway that one could see behind the receptionist.

‘Do you know what goes on in that room?’

‘I think people go into one of those rooms to sort out what happened to them.  Someone called this whole building the "sorting place."  At least, that is what I have picked up from some conversations.  In the room, some people also sort out people's future "accommodations."  Whenever someone comes out of a room, two or more people escort him or her away.  I’ve seen one person very happy and another who actually looked terrified.'

‘I don’t feel frightened,’ said the boy.  The girl looked at him.  ‘Neither do I.  It was strange to see this.  A curious place.’

The waiting room magazines looked well worn, months old.  They were a little odd and uninteresting, being pages of shapes coloured in with black ink.  Neither picked one up.  They sat silently for a while, trying to look at something.  Nothing was interesting to see.  There were no pictures on the walls.  They watched the receptionist, who occasionally wrote something in a large book.

‘What happened to you?’ the boy finally asked.  ‘That is, if you don’t mind my asking.’

She smiled.  ‘Not at all.  I don’t really know, to be honest.  I remember falling asleep.  I was in the hospital, in the neonatal intensive care unit, to be precise.  Next thing I know, here I am!  How about you?’

The boy shuddered.  ‘I can’t really explain.  I know a few things.  I was oh so comfortable.  Then, suddenly, a needle was inserted into my umbilical cord.  The drug burned through my veins with searing pain.  I lost consciousness.  And now, here I am.’

An orderly came out of room 2 and approached the receptionist.  ‘Please enter this into the record, but the next case is also related.  We need to switch these two as well.’  She pointed in the book.  ‘You might want to wait a bit on that room 2 schedule.’ 

The orderly approached the baby girl.  ‘You will be after the boy as something has come up.  I’m sorry for the extra wait.’

‘What’s happening?’ the baby boy asked.

The orderly looked at them kindly.  ‘We’re sorting this out.  You are in a good place, though.  We just have some questions to ask various people and some information to give. We are getting all the records straight.  Then we’ll take you to the proper place for each of you, but neither of you have any reason to worry about anything now.’  As the orderly spoke, the children felt comfort and love.

‘But what happened to us?’ asked the girl.

The orderly looked at the receptionist.  ‘They want to know what happened to them.’  The receptionist nodded and came over.  ‘What happened to you does not matter and is something you will soon forget.  We will tell you, though.  This is part of the sorting process.  You need to know that nothing was your fault, and you will be perfectly fine now.’  As she spoke, the children felt an overwhelming sense of joy.

Both children stared at her.  Their quizzical looks were really about what caused such a sense of joy, but the receptionist thought that they still wanted an answer right away about what happened to them.

‘OK.  I can tell you briefly, but you will know much more after your name is called to go to your room.  You,’ she said to the girl, ‘were in the NICU unit of a hospital.  You were born two weeks ago.  A very bad nurse who is killing babies on the unit killed you.  Nobody knows this down there yet, but it will all get sorted out.  Everyone will be sorted when it is time.’

‘And you,’ she said to the boy, ‘were not yet born.  You were only ten weeks since conception.  Your mother decided to, as she put it, “terminate her pregnancy.”  You don’t have to be afraid as she cannot hurt you anymore.  Everything gets sorted.  We’ll be calling both of you shortly.  Sorry for the wait.’

‘Calling us together?’ they both asked at the same time.

‘No, no.  Everyone has his or her own sorting.  You will both be called to room 3 when your time comes, but one after the other.’

The receptionist and orderly continued with their duties as someone suddenly appeared in one of the chairs, to the boy’s amazement.  ‘Is that how I arrived?’ he asked.

‘Yes.  All of a sudden, you were sitting beside me.  I’m glad you are here,’ said the girl.

The new arrival was causing a stir.  She was a woman of about 330 months old.  ‘What am I doing here?’ she demanded.  She approached the receptionist.  ‘What is this place?  Why am I here?  Where’s my doctor?’

‘This is not a hospital,’ the receptionist explained.  ‘You are at the sorting place.  Someone will be with you shortly.’  Just then, door 2 in the hallway opened and shut as a man was taken in the other direction by two attendants.  He was sobbing.  The woman looked shocked or frightened, or possibly mad.  ‘What is going on?’ she insisted.

‘Not to worry.  We’ll call you in just awhile and you will have all your questions answered.’

The woman, however, raised her voice.  ‘I do not want to wait.  What is a sorting place?  I need some better answers and I need them now.’

An attendant emerged from door 2.  ‘Please have a seat, and I will give you a few answers.  We can prepare you a little while the room is readied.’  The door was left open a little.  The children could see a file on a desk and four people in robes. 

The attendant and woman sat down at one of the tables in the waiting room.  ‘In a few minutes, we will meet with you and your life will be sorted.  That will determine the next steps.’

The woman stared at the attendant.  ‘My life sorted?’ she exclaimed.

‘I am sorry to inform you that you are dead.’

‘What?!  How is that possible?’

‘What you termed a ‘pregnancy termination’ had some complications.  There was bleeding, some error….  You died.  Now you are here to have your life sorted before we proceed with your accommodations.  Our team is assembling the information we need right now, and then you will be interviewed.  This won’t take long.’

‘I’m dead?  You are telling me that I am dead?’

‘Yes, this is the sorting place ….’

‘Yes, Yes, I heard you before.’  She looked around.  ‘Those people there, are they also dead?’

‘Quite right.  You must not approach them.  They are innocents.  There is only sorting of their cases, not any sorting of acts that they did in life.  We treat their kind of cases differently.’

‘Innocents?’  There was a quiver in her voice.

‘Yes, they were children when their lives ended.’

‘They do not look like children.’

‘No.  What you see is the presentation of their life.  They were virtually the same age.  One ten weeks, the other 43 weeks.’

‘So young to have died,’ said the woman.

The orderly looked at her.  ‘The older child had a weak heart.  A nurse at the hospital has been killing babies who are struggling to live.  She was killed by the nurse this morning.’

‘Oh, that is just awful.  How terrible.  Did the other child die the same way?’

‘Well, he was also killed, but by his mother.’

‘What?!’  She was shaking.  ‘How can people be so wicked?’

‘As I understand it,’ the orderly looked at a file in her hands, ‘the mother claimed that she was exercising a right to do what she wanted with her own body.’

An orderly emerged at that moment from room 3 and approached the boy.  ‘Will you come with me?’ she asked.  The boy hopped off his seat.  ‘I’ll see you later, then,’ he said to the girl.  She smiled, ‘Yes, yes.  We will see each other shortly, I am sure.’

The orderly shielded the boy from the woman at the table as they passed by and walked to door number 3 on the hallway.  As the boy passed by, the woman experienced a feeling she had never known before.  It was not physical, of course.  But it was like something physical, or perhaps emptiness of soul, a great void of purposelessness, a sense of loss.  Yet there were shadows around this void, feelings of threatening chaos around purposeless existence where there is only self and no engagement, let alone friendship or worship.  And then there was an overwhelming feeling of guilt and shame.

The woman gasped.

‘We can go now,’ said the orderly to the woman.  ‘We are just over here in room 2.’

‘It was my right,’ she muttered.

‘The Author and Giver of Life is the only one to make a claim like that.  We must not confuse a right with a choice.  You made a choice, and it took your child’s life.  You were what you called ‘Pro-Choice.’  Now you will be able to give an account of your choice to end your child’s life as it was just beginning.  May I suggest as you do so that you remember this: the Author and Giver of Life is very pro-life, and He judges peoples' choices justly.’

The girl overheard this.  The ‘Author and Giver of Life.’  She felt what might be described as a beam of eternity pass through her, leaving her with a sense of new life and total peace.  The receptionist looked up and shielded her eyes.  She looked away, smiling.